Red Troubles

Launched on Oct. 4, 1957, Russia's Sputnik 1 triggered a storm of criticism for U.S. education, which was accused of turning out used-car dealers and basketball players instead of scientists. Indeed. Soviet scientific education was even touted as a model that the U.S. should try to follow. Last week that attitude looked pretty silly: few U.S. experts now believe that the Russians are far ahead in science education--and the Soviets themselves have begun to look sourly at their own system.

In a recent issue of Soviet Weekly, Academician Mikhail Lavrentyev, vice president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, berated Soviet schools and universities for not producing more and better trained scientists. Much of the trouble, he said, comes from the "divorce" between research institutes and universities. The best scientists avoid becoming university professors because they fear being loaded with so much teaching that they can do little or no research. They prefer the institutes, which do research only. Attempts by education authorities to make the institutes into centers of scientific education have come to little. The institute directors will not cooperate because they regard teaching as a drag on research.

All this sounds familiar to U.S. scientists and educators, who have long been plagued by the same problem of research v. teaching. A peculiarly Russian difficulty is the high average age of Soviet scientists. U.S. scientists get their doctorates in their late 20s, but most Russian scientists wait until they are 50 before they even try for a Ph.D. Older still are the top men of the scientific hierarchy. "These venerable scientists," says the article, "are responsible for the situation because they feel that only a person of advanced age can become a doctor of science. This artificial retardation of the development of our young people is harmful to science. Doctors must be trained at the age of 30-35 when a person thinks boldly and broadly."

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